A lot goes into crafting a video game.
And many times, developers will slip in things that can seem as if the game has a life of
it’s own, as if some sentient force is really behind creepy little discoveries players find
within some of their favourite titles.
But some of the creepy stuff we’ve found in games in the past seem a little harder
to explain, and have spawned rumours and ubran legends about games being haunted.
Some of these are complete fiction, that’s for sure.
And some do have a grain of truth.
We’ll let you be the judge.
This is our part 2 of the top 10 scary cursed video game urban legends.
10 Final Fantasy VIII Let’s start off our list with a creepy urban
legend that’s outside of the curse territory.
Final Fantasy 8 is one of the most beloved games in the franchise.
But there’s an urban legend surrounding one of it’s characters, Squall, that is
hard to ignore.
Ever hear those rumours and myths about famous people secretly being dead but then replaced
with a doppelgänger?
People have been saying that about Paul McCartney of the Beatles for ages, and even more recently,
of Avril Lavigne.
This conspiracy theory concerning Squall is pretty similar.
At the end of the 1st disc of the game, Squall is impaled by an ice shard while fighting
Edea.
He awakens at the beginning of the second disc, with no visible wounds.
No one ever really brings up that he was killed either.
It’s also the point in the game where it becomes significantly less realistic, making
many believe that Squall actually died at the end of Disc One, and that the second half
of the game is all just a dream, or him in the afterlife.
Squall also sees his life flash before his eyes later on in the game, including a moment
in which Squall doesn’t have a face; one of the creepiest moments in the franchise,
for sure.
9 Luigi’s Mansion There’s a very odd and disturbing scene
that many fans of the Gamecube title Luigi’s Mansion have picked up on over the years since
it was released.
At one point in the game, when lightning strikes during the blackout, Luigi can pick up a phone
for help.
When the lightning strikes, in the background, you can see Luigi’s body up in the air,
appearing as if he’s being hung.
It’s worth noting that the original gamecube title made use of dynamic shadows in it’s
mechanics, whenever Luigi would move his flashlight around, the shadows would act appropriately
based on what shapes and objects were in the room.
This makes this even creepier, because this shadow clearly wasn’t generated by any sort
of object or in game light source.
It just appeared.
Many believe it is simply an easter egg, while others think it’s sort of threat within
the game.
Or that there’s a possible ending in the game in which Luigi commits suicide.
Another popular belief is that it’s something that was accidentally left in the game from
an earlier version that contained a much darker plot.
8 Tails Doll For whatever reason, Sonic games spark a lot
of scary urban legends.
Guess it’s just something about the fan base!
This one in particular has to do with the racing game Sonic R. The tale usually follows
a father and son who become obsessed with the game, and almost unlock all of the hidden
characters in one night’s worth of play.
One of those unlockable characters is Tails Doll - a robotic doll crafted by Doctor Robotnik.
He’s a strange character, and one that feels like it doesn’t really belong in the title.
But anywho, as they play, the son gets tired and goes to bed, but the day decides to keep
going, playing late into the night.
The game begins to heavily glitch when he plays as Tails Doll, who, depending on the
version of the myth, begins to look back at him, is unresponsive, and in general starts
exhibiting creepy behaviour.
Some versions of the story entail a power outage in which the console and game shut
off.
Other versions just jump to this moment - the dad begins to hear knocking on the door of
the room he’s playing in.
Thinking it’s his son, he calls out for him to go back to bed.
But the knocking persists.
So he gets up and opens the door.
That’s when he comes face to face with a real life Tails Doll, covered in blood, looking
at him dead in the eyes.
7 Lair Here we have a game that isn’t so much cursed
for players, but rather, it’s said to have cast a curse on those who made it.
So for context, Lair is a game that was released in 2007, an action adventure title that was
developed by a company called Factor 5 and published by Sony.
And when it was released, it got panned hard by critics, with some even calling one of
the most disappointing games of the decade.
While it’s very well just another tragic game development story, filled with delays,
bad decisions, conflict with the publisher and much much more, some began to claim that
the game was something more nefarious than what was being let on to the public.
Rumours concerning the game and those behind it began to circulate online.
Apparently, it’s production and roll out were severely troubled, with several members
of the creative team behind it suffering from serious health issues, or had relatives that
died during the game’s development.
After the game was released, Factor 5 eventually went bankrupt; some believe that was because
of the Lair curse, while others think it was just the inevitable cause and effect of creating
a 25 million dollar game that bombed on the market.
6 Sonic.exe Sonic exe is an urban legend that a few of
you in the comments of our part one suggested we mention.
So here we go!
It’s one of the most popular creepy video game urban legends out there.
So the story goes that a gamer received an unmarked disc from his friend and popped it
into his computer, only to discover is that it was a PC ported copy of the original Sonic
the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis.
Although something was slightly off about the game- when they player hit start, the
title screen flickered for a moment, showing a demonic Sonic with flames in the background.
It gets weirder from there.
The game opens up a character select, and the player can see Tails, Robotnik and Knuckles,
with only Tails available to play.
So he selects Tails, thinking that this must be some sort of modded version of the game.
The game seems normal at first, until he realizes there’s no enemies.
Eventually, Tails slows down and stops running.
As he keeps walking, he comes face to face with Sonic.
But this is no regular Sonic; he’s demonic looking.
He begins to taunt and chase Tails until he seemingly violently attacks the character.
The character select reappears, and the player is forced to choose Knuckles.
Something similar happens, with the demonic Sonic appearing.
Next up is Robotnik, and he looks scared as hell.
And of course, the same thing happens, with Robotnik getting attacked by Sonic.
The game then ends - this is where the myth differs.
Usually, the title ends with a demonic message from Sonic.
Other times, the game ends, and the player sees the corpses of Tails, Knuckles and Robotnik.
And other times, the player sees all of the above, and turns around to discover a plush
doll of Sonic covered in blood seated in the room with them.
5 Grand Theft Auto Dead Woman In GTA V there’s a whole side quest that’s
known as Murder Mystery.
You go around Los Santos discovering clues pertaining to a mysterious murder that’s
connected to the film industry in the game.
It all leads up to finding a handful of dead bodies, and a reward of two noir snapmatic
filters – yes, slightly anticlimatic, if we’re being honest.
But what makes this creepy compared to other missions in the game?
It’s the fact that unlike other side missions, there is no introductry message informing
you about it.
This has led some players to suspect that perhaps the mission is actually a subtle shout
out to a real crime in LA, and that someone at Rockstar is using the game to reveal a
murder mystery in real life.
4 Sad Satan It’s unknown when Sad Satan came out.
It became popular after a youtube channel called Obscure Horror Corner shared their
game recordings, claiming they found the game on the Deep Web, suggested to them by an anonymous
user.
The game is made up of monochromatic corridors that you walk down as distorted or reversed
audio samples play on loop.
Images will intermittently appear, ones that feature child abuse, pedophiles, famous murderers
or serial killers, political figures, and other violent acts, including someone who
had been hit by a truck, and a beheading.
As they played, occasionally a black screen with the wingding font would appear.
Someone on reddit decoded the screens to discover they were filled with eerie messages the likes
of “I can track you”, “kill kill kill again” and “you are on my list”.
At the end of the game, the phrase suffering doesn’t end appears.
Sad Satan was the last game that Obscure Horror corner had covered, and ever since, they’ve
gone completely MIA, abandoning the youtube channel.
Rumours have it that the game is cursed, while others believe it was created by the owners
of the channel in order to increase their subscriber count and views.
Other versions of the story suggest that the owners of the channel decided to go into hiding
after a version of Sad Satan became available online and was filled with malware, which
seriously screwed around with a lot of people’s computers.
3 The Theatre The Theatre is an urban legend about an old
game that some debate whether it even exists.
Apparently, it was released around the same time as the original Doom, and it can only
be found in what appears to be a bootleg CD ROM.
The legitimate copies of the game feature a blank cover with the sprite of what has
become known as the ticket taker - the only character in the game.
He’s a poorly drawn, pixelated bald white man with red lips and a red vest, emotionless.
The cover has nothing else on it, no developer name, no title, nothing.
The game is said to have issues installing, but once its up and running, the main menu
takes you to an empty street with a movie theatre on it.
Once you’re in the movie theatre, it’s entirely empty except for the ticket taker.
You go up to him, and a text box appears that reads Thank you, please enjoy the movie.
You then move down a hallway towards a theatre, but the screen eventually fades to black.
When it fades back in, you’re back in the lobby of the movie theatre with only the same
thing to do again.
And again.
Until, after what feels like over a hundred times of doing the same action, you return
to the lobby, and the ticket taker isn’t there.
When you walk towards the hallway, the text box still pops up despite the ticket taker
not being there.
This time, when you walk down the hallway, and it fades to black, you don’t go back
to the lobby right away.
You continue to hear the footsteps sound effect as you go further and further into the darkness.
Eventually though, you see something - it’s the ticket taker sprite, but instead of his
regular head, he now has a black and white swirl, which players have come to call the
swirly headman.
Players who see this swirly head man have claimed to immediately feel ill.
Nothing happens in the game for a while, until a loud piecing screech plays out of the game
and it glitches.
You return to the lobby abruptly.
If you continue to walk down the hallway, eventually, the ticket taker appears to be
pacing back and forth, with his eyes and mouth wide open in fear.
Some players noted the movie posters in the lobby would change to horrific images or images
of the swirly head man.
When you speak to the ticket taker this time, the text in the text box is illegible, and
a low quality audio clip plays that many believe is a voice saying the words never reach the
other levels.
The screen fades out, and when it comes back, you’re in the lobby once more, with a brick
wall covering the entranceway to the theatre.
No one has ever been able to get beyond that part of the game, and many claim to have experienced
negative health side effects after seeing the Swirly Head Man.
2 Taboo The Sixth Sense Taboo the Sixth sense was a game for the NES
that was essentially a tarot card simulator.
Players would enter their name and age into the game, and the game would use a series
of algorithms to take guesses at various things, just like real life tarot cards.
Except, it started predicting some really weird stuff.
Rumours started to surface that the game had correctly guessed the deaths of several players
who passed away shortly after playing the game.
Then, the game was quietly taken off the market, making many believe it was somehow involved
in a conspiracy theory, or that it was cursed.
1 Killswitch Killswitch is one of the creepiest video game
urban legends kicking around on the interwebs.
According to the myth, the game was developed by a Soviet gaming company called Karvina
Co in 1989.
Not much is known about the company, aside from the fact that they create existential
puzzles and mind games, and that their titles have political undertones.
They also have a youtube channel, but whether or not any of that is actually real and not
fiction, who knows.
Anyway, Killswitch is one of their games, and only a limited amount of copies of it
were produced, estimated between 5000 and 10,000.
It was a survival horror title, and you had to choose between playing as either a girl
named Porto or an invisible demon named Ghast, navigating your way through an abandoned coal
mine.
No one had ever beaten the game as Ghast since it was impossible, and if you beat it as Porto,
the game would erase itself from your hard drive.
Here’s where the creepy stuff comes in.
In 2005, an unopened copy of the game popped up on Ebay, and a man in Japan named Yamamoto
Ryuichi bought it for a total of $733,000.
He had planned to record himself playing the game and put it on YouTube.
But only one video ever surfaced of Ryuichi, and it was one of him staring at his computer
screen, crying for a minute and forty five seconds.